Managing a network's performance to support a wide range of network-based real-time applications is a challenging task. Network applications are known to cause a significant percentage of network outages and service degradations, resulting in a loss of productivity and revenue for the network operator. In particular, the use of packet based, real-time applications on enterprise network infrastructures has increased substantially. Typically, such real time applications have specific performance requirements, including stringent Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) requirements. With potentially hundreds of network accessible applications being operated in a given network and each application having its own network performance requirements, there is a need to be able to configure a network to meet the needs of these applications, while preventing network outages and service degradation. One known technique is to adjust network parameters from a network perspective to optimize the performance of the nodes and thus prevent the network from being excessively congested. However such network centric tuning cannot optimize network application specific performance nor can it isolate network application performance related issues. Since metrics are typically generated by the service provider on a peer basis, network application specific performance metrics cannot be obtained or configured.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method that can overcome the performance disconnect between the network and application performance. Specifically, there is a need for improved network application aware monitoring and optimization.